These hillsides are a delight. The first time I came here I met and asked directions from a chap who, it transpired, had a tiny camper van in a farmer’s field. I saw him again, in that field, when I finished my walk. I saw him the next year too, quite randomly, which is the third time that’s happened. I used to go regularly to a bed and breakfast farmhouse at Eskdale and met the same chap a year later who, he said, was always there in the spring. In Scotland a few years ago, I met a chap climbing Slioch whom I’d met the year before at a Glen Shiel camp site.

That’s Snowdon in the distance, a very fine sight, but I prefer coming over here where it’s rough and quiet and full of atmosphere. A few years ago I walked the hillsides lower down, looking for photographs, and marveled at the rhododendrons you find there. But they’re an invasive pest, someone told me, not indigenous and taking over.